


Way of the Heavenly Fist - Part 2: Lesson Learned

by Shivaree76



Series: Way of the Heavenly Fist [2]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Dominance, F/F, Femdom, Fighting, Healing, Martial Arts, Submission, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 07:32:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14159853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shivaree76/pseuds/Shivaree76
Summary: As Cassandra Cain explores her newfound abilities, doubt begins to creep inside her mind, driving her to another late-night encounter with her mother. Can Lady Shiva help her daughter unburden herself? And will Cassandra survive the experience?





	Way of the Heavenly Fist - Part 2: Lesson Learned

**Author's Note:**

> (tbh, I wasn't really planning on doing more of these, but then I had an idea on how to continue it and now I'm thinking of making it a full-on trilogy. Hope you enjoy this one, and if you'd like to read more or if you got any feedback, please let me know in the comments)

            The last of the muggers dropped unconscious to the ground with a wet thud and a cold silence fell along with him over the rain-soaked alley. Then the woman started screaming in pain and everything else seemed to disappear. Cassandra turned around slowly and put her hands up, trying her best to look like anything other than a threat. But the poor woman had clearly had a rough night, and when the pepper spray slipped off her hands like a bar of soap, a wail of pure despair rushed out of her bleeding mouth. Spreading her arms a little to give her a clear look at her symbol, Cassandra took a few steps forward and tried to find the right words to let her know it was all right, that nobody was going to hurt her any more.

            But the woman was already hurting. Cassandra could see that much. She had suffered at the very least a sprained ankle, her leg having twisted at a bad angle when she tripped while trying to run. Maybe the fall had also injured her arm. Either way, she was in no state, mental or physical, to do anything beyond screaming her lungs out. And Cassandra reckoned she would soon run out of enough air to do even that. Silently, Cassandra decided to give the woman some space, to focus on tying up the thieves and dial 911 and let the professionals handle it. But then she took another look at the woman’s expression, at the sheer, soul-crushing powerlessness inscribed in her eyes, and wished more than anything that there was something she could do. And she realized, there was one thing…

             “Please, don’t be afraid,” she said, as she took one more step towards the screaming woman. Then another. “I’m here to help,” she added, raising her hands even further up, just slightly above her mask’s ears, “please.”

            As delicately as possible, Cassandra crouched on one knee next to the woman, and reached out towards her outstretched leg. For a moment she feared she’d pull it away, like a scared animal, but she now seemed too tired for that. Her impotency had grown into full surrender, and Cassandra’s heart sank with it, but she grit her teeth and focused on that one thing she could do. She knew she could do it. She knew it.

            Holding the woman’s limp foot with both hands, her fingers traced the beating blood vessels that thumped violently across the wounded area, following them to the closest nerve cluster. A few tense seconds later, she found it, and biting her lip under her mask, Cassandra gave the pressure point a slight push with her thumbs.

            There was a gasp and what sounded like the start of a renewed round of screams, but it never came. Instead, Cassandra raised her head to look at the woman’s face, and found that all the terror and sorrow had vanished. Her skin, pale as the snow before, was suddenly flushed red. And there was a look of disbelief and surprise in her eyes, the shock of a feeling that every cell in her brain was telling her didn’t belong in this situation.

            “I… I don’t feel it,” she said, her voice cracking every three words, “the pain. I don’t feel it. What…”

            “Does it hurt? Anywhere else?”

            “N-no, not really, I… gosh,” she said, and looked at Cassandra with a strangely sweet kind of awestruck amazement she’d never seen before.

            “Good,” Cassandra whispered in relief, blushing under her mask, then repeated in a slightly louder voice, “good. Stay here. I’ll call emergencies. It’s going to be all right.”

* * *

 

            “And for a moment,” Cassandra explained, concluding her story, “she wasn’t afraid, or in pain any more. I know I didn’t cure her or anything. I know it would only last long enough for the medics to arrive. But to take that pain away for a while, to give her comfort and peace… It felt good.”

            “I imagine so,” Lady Shiva replied.

            “Have you… ever felt that way?”

            The rain had stopped somewhere halfway through Cassandra’s account, and the still damp air carried with it the soft scent of jasmines. They had met at a different location this time, a manor on the outskirts of the city that was surrounded by a dazzling Chinese garden that made Cassandra wish it was daytime, just to see its myriad colors under a more natural light.

            “Not particularly”, was her mother’s answer, and she didn’t seem to be lying. She raised her cup and brought it to her face before adding: “But I can see that comfort you speak of, not in her, but in yourself.”

            Cassandra waited patiently for her mother to finish her tea. She felt she’d said enough already, and was starting to feel a little embarrassed, telling all this to a woman she knew couldn’t care less about easing some random person’s pain. Was this really what her mother wanted her to do with what she had taught her? That night two weeks ago, the one Cassandra relived vividly in her dreams every night since, had it been worth it? It was strange, to worry this much about the desires of a killer. But that night, Lady Shiva had shown to her that she was so much more. And that Cassandra herself could be so much more too. And maybe it was that dream, that hope, that she didn’t want to let down. Regardless of whom it belonged to.

            “It is the comfort of knowing your true path,” Shiva finally continued, “of acting free of thought and seeing yourself in those actions, who you are and what you do finally becoming one and the same.”

            “I thought I knew that already. When I first joined… them.”

            “Speak freely. When you joined the Batman in his never ending battle against crime.”

            “Yes. When I… did that, I knew that was the path I wanted to follow. But it never felt as good as it did tonight.”

            “Of course not,” she said, refilling her cup. “Before, your path was dark. The shadows of your past and the uncertainty of your future shrouded your view. But now, the light has chased away the shadows, and you see clearly the path ahead.”

            “What light?”

            “Your own,” Shiva answered, and moved forward to refill Cassandra’s cup. With a gesture, she declined, and Shiva backed off. “Do you remember what we talked about two weeks ago?”

            “That I… underestimate myself? And need to accept who I am?” Cassandra asked, smiling weakly. They had talked a lot that night. And done a lot more than talking, too. She was hoping tonight would be no different.

            “Nobody ordered you to heal that woman’s ankle. Nobody trained you for it either. You just did it. And when you did, you were at peace. It could not be simpler.”

            “But is it right?”

            At this, Shiva finally looked surprised, even if only a little. Cassandra thought she saw her eyebrows raise just enough to say so.

            “Right,” she repeated, making it sound like she was trying to pronounce a word in a language utterly foreign to her, “what does ‘right’ have to do with it?”

            “If I healed that woman just to feel good about myself, does that make it right? Did I do it because I actually cared about her well-being, or did I just use her to forget for a moment what I was raised to do? Am I being selfish and calling it virtue? Or--“

            In the blink of an eye, Lady Shiva shot up and raised to her full height in a motion that brought to Cassandra’s mind the image of a sword being unsheathed. Her mother’s eyes grew cold and sharp, and Cassandra felt her skin being pierced through and through by her icy glare. It was a ridiculous notion to even consider, but she thought Shiva was about to throw her tea in her face.

            “Are you so surrounded by weaklings,” she said, her voice brutally dry, “that you feel this irrepressible urge to become your own worst enemy?”

            Shiva didn’t move one inch from her place, but to Cassandra, it was as if the distance between them had disappeared and widened all at the same time. She didn’t even try to answer. Her mother waited a few seconds, then left her cup on the table, and then left the table altogether.

            “A search for yourself is by necessity selfish. You may as well complain of getting wet while learning to swim. Your reasons for carrying out a deed are inconsequential. You chose to do it anyway,” Shiva finished, then relaxed her shoulders and turned around to look at her daughter. “Finish your tea, then join me at the other end of this garden. We shall speak in a language you will surely understand.”

            Cassandra watched her mother walk away and disappear around a corner of the garden. Her heart sank in her chest for the second time that night and her head dropped down, letting her catch her reflection inside the teacup. A feeling of déjà vu blew through her, quickly overwhelmed by the strangest sense of shame she’d ever felt. She considered leaving just then, jumping over the garden wall and walking away, away from her mother and her inscrutable designs. But her last words had gotten to her. Deep under her embarrassment, they had lit a spark of excitement in Cassandra. One that couldn’t be denied. She felt the pull of those words and the promise contained in them, and wanted nothing more than to surrender to them.

            But first, she needed to finish her tea. And find a way to get over herself.

* * *

 

            There was no ring this time, but whoever owned the manor had seen fit to transform a clearing in its garden into a makeshift sparring room. Padded mats of a very bright red covered the cement ground which probably served as a dining space for more ordinary visitors, and as she walked closer, Cassandra realized they were brand new, as if purchased exclusively for the occasion. The mats ended more than a few feet away from the bushes of rich wisterias and lilies, likely to protect them of any falling bodies, but they still covered a surface large enough for a proper scrap.

            Standing in the middle of this, with her back turned towards her approaching daughter, was Lady Shiva. She was still wearing the bright black and red silk qipao she’d welcomed her in, but Cassandra noticed she had taped her fists and was sliding her hands into a pair of fingerless leather gloves. An unexplainable chill ran through Cassandra’s back, but she gulped it back in and stepped onto the mats, her cape closed to cover her body. High above them, the rain started falling again, light and neat and nearly silent.

            There was something in her mother, looking as effortlessly beautiful as any of the hundreds of flowers that surrounded her, that only made Cassandra feel more self-conscious that she ever knew she could feel. In her presence she felt flawed and diminished, and the way Shiva’s taut arms and long, sculpted legs poured out of her dress only made matters worse. Cassandra clutched her cape even closer to her body, her chest suddenly pounding with anxiety as her eyes noticed for the first time just how high the cut of her mother’s qipao really was. Although even that couldn’t compare with how high her underwear must have been, since Cassandra was unable to see even a hint of it. Eventually, she mustered enough courage to look at her mother straight in the eyes, and in them found an oddly contagious relaxation that swept away her fear.

            “Come,” she said, without a trace of anger nor frustration, “show me.”

            Cassandra obliged and opened her cape. At the moment, she hadn’t really asked herself why she’d chosen to remove her uniform and present herself to her mother like this. The idea had simply come to her, pure and irresistible. But now, feeling the droplets of cold rainwater fall onto her bare skin and putting her worn-out, scarred young body in front of her mother’s ageless beauty, the question arrived with furious vengeance. Biting her lip, Cassandra looked timidly Shiva for any reaction, trying desperately not to notice the way the rain was making her mother’s clothes and skin glisten even more.

            “See?” her mother suddenly asked, pulling her out of her trance. “Not that hard, is it?”

            Cassandra nodded. Two gloved hands reached around her back and pulled the damp leather cape off. There was a smile on Shiva’s face, a warm, glowing smile that made Cassandra’s throat run dry. Her mother’s generous chest, tight against the glittering black silk, filled her vision.

            “Act without thought. Free yourself from the world. Live here, in this moment, for yourself and your desires. Accept them as a part of you. And tell me,” she said, and softly pulled Cassandra’s chin up to let their eyes meet, “what do you desire?”

            “I want to fight,” Cassandra whispered, and immediately realized that wasn’t true. That it wasn’t the whole truth. “I want to fight you. And I want you to use it again.”

            “The Heavenly Fist?” Shiva asked through her wicked smile. “But of course. After all, I learned much about it when you used it on me. Remember?”

            Cassandra remembered alright. She remembered her mother, sweating and panting, crawling on all fours like a ravished beast, beaten into the ground by an avalanche of pleasure the likes of which she’d never experienced, fighting just to pull herself up and then staring back at her from the corner of an old ring with nothing but lust in her eyes before tearing her own vest off and thrusting her chest out, daring… begging her daughter to fight on…

            “Yes.”

            “Good,” Shiva said, and threw her fist into Cassandra’s chest so quickly that it took a second for her and the universe to notice it.

            It’d been a vertical fist blow, landed squarely below her breasts, slightly above her solar plexus. Cassandra’s eyes shot up and she braced herself to fall backwards, but the impact itself never registered. Instead, what she felt was a dull but comfortable sort of ache that lit up in her chest, then swiftly began coursing through the rest of her body. By the time the throbbing sensation had reached her shoulders, Cassandra finally recognized it, just in time for her knees to hit the ground as her legs gave out. Her breathing became instantly labored and her heart pounded away in her breast. But through it all, her eyes remained glued to her mother’s own stare, which now burned with a cruel delight behind damp strands of coal-black hair.

            “Feeling the technique first-hand has helped me perfect it, and find an equivalent pressure point at the front of the body. Its effects are slightly less immediate, but due to its proximity to your heart, they should last longer,” she explained, and ordered her up with a gesture from her fingers. Once more, Cassandra complied, as if invisible strings ran from her mother’s hand to her shaking body, and before she knew it she was back on her feet and awkwardly trying to take a stance. “Let us find out just how much.”

* * *

 

            Without that tangible limit to their fight, time came completely unglued for Cassandra. It simply ceased to run as Shiva once more delighted in using and abusing her body, unleashing all manner of punches, kicks, elbows and knees into her frame and only occasionally stopping to bend her limbs in spectacularly painful ways. And through it all, Cassandra could only thank her and beg for more. Not with words, of course. Those were always the first thing to go, every time they faced off. But her body, battered and tortured by the savagely delicious beating, only found new ways to express just how much she was enjoying her mother’s touch.

            Shiva had come at her like a tiger from the start, completely ruthless and utterly flawless in her execution. Knowing how much Cassandra could take had not only removed the few reservations she’d had two weeks ago, it also pushed Shiva to try and take her daughter to that edge of blissful agony even faster than before. And now that she had succeeded, the goal had become to keep her there until she could take no more. This turned out to be a far more interesting challenge.

            Their first few clashes had been lightning fast bouts of close quarters combat, as Shiva tore away at Cassandra’s defenses with a flurry of jabs and hooks, her leather-clad knuckles crashing dozens of times against her naked forearms and shoulders. Soon enough, Cassandra’s arms were awash with a tingling sensation, like they were getting a firm but tender rubdown, that numbed them down. A growing impatience coming from below her center urged Cassandra to drop her guard and just take her punishment like a woman, but she sucked it in, determined to fight for as long as her mind could hold.

Through gritted teeth, Cassandra threw a few retaliatory strikes herself, too weak and flabby to do anything but bounce off Shiva’s ironclad muscles. Still, they seemed to please her mother, who in return stepped inside Cassandra’s guard and began hammering away at her tense body. The combination of hooks and uppercuts that pummeled Cassandra’s midsection soon had her moaning loudly and bouncing on her toes with every new blow. And after pounding her abs long and hard enough to see the skin over them turn a pale purple, Shiva took a step back, curled her body just a little, and delivered a meteoric straight punch that bent her daughter in half.

            Cassandra’s arms and legs immediately went limp as flecks of spit blasted out of her now open mouth. Her irises narrowed and air rushed out of her lungs, pushing an anguished grunt from her throat. Pleasure exploded inside her body hard enough to make her feel she’d reached her first orgasm. For a moment, past her mother’s excellent form, she saw the red of the mat and prepared to welcome it, but suddenly, she found herself going the wrong way. Up instead of down. At some point, Shiva had taken hold of Cassandra’s right wrist, and turned the fist that had crushed her abs into an open tiger claw. And so, using the momentum of the blow, Cassandra’s limp form had been plucked from the ground and raised effortlessly over Shiva’s shoulders, drawing a perfect semi-circle over her mother that came to a devastating end when she was dropped back first onto the mat.

            “GWAHH!” Cassandra cried out as ripples of joy ran all the way from the tip of her heels to the crown of her head and back to her crotch. For a moment she could feel nothing else but the warm, wet excitement growing between her legs, wildly aroused at how quickly and thoroughly her mother had taken control of the fight. And to her delight, Shiva wasn’t done yet. She was still holding onto her lifeless arm, now with both of her hands, and in a blur of motion she captured it between her legs, took one step over Cassandra’s head so her face was pressed against her right calf, and stopped for half a second to give her a chance to take a breath before starting to wrench her daughter’s arm out.

            The hold had Cassandra squirming in abject bliss instantaneously as her wrist, elbow and shoulder joints were all bent out of place. The sensation was indescribable, a constant rush of endless euphoria that echoed through her entire body, heightened by the rain falling freely over her quivering body. And having her face so close to her mother’s leg, close enough to smell her, only turned Cassandra further on. Choking back screams, she found herself kissing Shiva’s rock-hard muscles as they tensed, even caressing them with her free hand, while her own legs rubbed madly together, spreading juices all across her thighs. And soon enough, she didn’t even have the clarity of mind to do any of that. With a whimper, Cassandra rolled onto her back, splayed herself out and waited breathlessly for her first orgasm.

            She didn’t have to wait a lot. Sensing the spasms coursing through Cassandra’s body, Shiva gave her one last, long tug and reveled in the shrill moan that signaled her daughter’s climax. When it was done, she released the arm, which flopped onto Cassandra’s chest, boneless and spent. Smiling deviously, Shiva planted one foot on Cassandra’s flushed cheek and looked into her misty eyes. Cassandra tried to look back, but her view was swimming in tears and rain. The clearest thing she could see was the long front flap of her mother’s qipao, gently flowing in the midnight breeze like a black banner unfurled from the top of a mighty tower. And for a second, through one hazy eye, she caught a peek underneath, at her mother’s bare thighs, and further up…

            A sharp kick to her face cleared some of the cobwebs from her head. Rolled around onto her belly, Cassandra coughed a few times and tried to steady her breath. She knew her mother was watching, waiting for her to get up and continue, certain that her daughter was not the kind of fighter to be defeated so easily. She was right. Soon, Cassandra was back on her feet, shaking a bit but steady enough to raise her fists. The afterglow would have to wait. Having experienced the qi-reversing effects of the technique she now knew as the Heavenly Fist, Cassandra had entered the fight determined to stay conscious as much as possible. Even though her body ached for further punishment, her mind felt compelled to stay awake and aware, before her energies were sapped away by another gleeful beating.

            The second round started at a longer distance than the opening exchanges, as Cassandra’s weakened, sluggish defense meant Shiva had much more leeway to throw not just long punches to her increasingly unprotected head, but also stiff kicks that had her scrambling to stay upright after every hit. With her reach and height advantage, Shiva chased the retreating Cassandra across the whole mat, delivering circular kicks to her calves, thighs, back and face to keep her spinning around. A sudden left kick to her stomach nearly doubled Cassandra over, sending her knees in tight and making her gasp for air. Her hands reflectively covered her battered abs, but one of them rebelled and instead started going further down, trying to reach inside her closed legs. Shiva put a stop to that with a rising Shaolin kick to Cassandra’s chin that sprung her back up and made her stumble, groggy and heavy, to the center of the mat.

            Cassandra didn’t even see the flying kick that floored her. Punch drunk as she was, the closest she came to was seeing a blur of black and red and pale skin speed towards her before her neck was cranked up and her back exploded with pleasure once again, ripples of damp joy reaching through her butt and around her pelvis. Both of her legs hung pathetically in the air for a moment, such was the force of her impact against the sweat-drenched mat, but when the moment passed, only one of them landed. This time, Cassandra didn’t need to see it. She knew what was coming the second she felt two iron claws gripping her leg. But still, she made the effort to crank herself up, making the bruises in her abs flare with joy, just to see what her mother had in store for her.

            With slow, titillating movements, Shiva wrapped her own legs around Cassandra’s captured limb, then let herself fall on her back, completing a textbook Jiu-Jitsu leg lock that made her daughter howl madly at the half moon above her. Thrashing about like a wild animal caught in a bear trap, Cassandra whimpered and moaned as her mother tightened the lock even further. The pleasure was even more overwhelming than before, closer as it was to Cassandra’s aching sex, and soon she was turning ever so slightly, desperate to bring Shiva in closer to her. But Shiva kept her distance, maintaining a total extension of her daughter’s leg, until she could feel her tensing up. It was only then, seconds away from another orgasm, that Shiva gave Cassandra what she wanted, and with a quick flick of her legs she pressed the ball of her left foot right into the younger girl’s labia.

            “GOUGHH!” Cassandra cried out, in a voice unrecognizable to either fighter. Her back arched violently, yielding to a series of brutal spasms that were closer to death throes than anything. Tears rolled freely down her eyes, past her upturned forehead, down her wet hair and into the ground, mingling with the patches of sweat and rain that blotted the ground. At some point in her ecstasy, Cassandra finally came, but when exactly, she couldn’t tell. Her world had gone black and Cassandra feared she was passing out. But then she felt her leg limping back to the ground, and heard footsteps splashing softly around her tired body, and finally opened her eyes to find her mother looking down on her, with that razor sharp smile of hers on. A winner’s smile. A conqueror’s smile.

            “Is that all?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t condescending or disappointed. In fact, she sounded rather amused at the lengths her daughter had gone in this lustful pursuit of deeper ecstasy. But somewhere inside of the ball of warm, damp orgasmic joy that she had become, Cassandra still had an ember of pride burning inside of her. And Shiva knew just how to hurt it.

            “Nnn…” Cassandra started, turning around once again. She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, but the moment she tried to go further, she collapsed back to the ground with a loud, humiliating splash. Somewhere above her, she thought she heard her mother laugh quietly. Or maybe she imagined it. But the next time she attempted to rise, she felt the tip of Shiva’s foot touching her chin, lifting her head up as softly as if it were made of feathers. And once more, Cassandra was caught staring up at the triumphant form of the deadliest woman in the world.

            The world around her was now floating in a sea of red, peppered with dull, maroon patches of sweat and drool. Far away in the distance, the flowers of the garden exploded into a thousand tones like fireworks frozen in the sky and reflected in five hundred minuscule mirrors. And standing in the middle of it all was her mother, terrible and immovable, dominant and gorgeous, her soaked silk dress clinging to her impeccable skin with cold jealousy. Cassandra’s unfocused eyes traced Shiva’s legs all the way up to the cut of her qipao, and they would’ve stayed here trying to figure out what was it that kept drawing her to that spot, but a snap kick prodded her chin up, ordering her to continue her climb. Shiva only pulled her foot back once Cassandra’s hands had left the ground, and her daughter rose back to her full height, as if Shiva’s sheer force of will were refueling her exhausted body.

            “Nnn… no,” Cassandra finally said. Smiling, Lady Shiva reached out with one hand and gently cleared the messy, humid strands of hair hiding her daughter’s battered face. She looked half-finished already, her right eye almost closed, her cheeks bruised and the corners of her lips marked by thin strips of saliva and blood. It was an unsightly look for her, especially when faced with her mother’s devastatingly sharp features, but to her muted surprise, Cassandra realized she didn’t care. The consciousness she had stubbornly clung to had been nearly pummeled out of her. The shame that had eaten at her earlier was simply not there, vanished to such an extent that she wondered if she’d actually felt it to begin with. She was finally starting to drift away.

            “Good girl,” her mother replied, and stepped forward with a nonchalant posture that made Cassandra, in her dazed state, believe that she was going to hug her. And for a moment that was exactly what she did, reaching her arms around her daughter’s punished body to bring her closer. Then on the next, Shiva launched a Muay Thai knee that lifted Cassandra right off her feet.

            “KUUHH”, she grunted, her mouth closing hard enough that even her teeth flared up in pleasure. Cassandra would’ve crumbled to the ground as a boneless heap of quivering flesh right then and there, but Shiva’s hold on her tightened, keeping her up to receive more demolishing knees. Each one seemed to pry open Cassandra’s mouth even further, and by the sixth, her jaw was completely loose and her tongue hung out like a panting dog’s. She had no strength in what was left of her abs, so every impact penetrated as deeply as her mother wanted it to, crushing her internal organs and making tears fall out of her wide-open, crystallized eyes again. Cassandra assumed it must’ve been a sickening sight, this savage beating, but it was such a wonderful feeling.

            Eventually, after a dozen or so blows, Cassandra’s last vestiges of rational thought finally faded away. She’d tried her best, but in the end, the pleasure had overwhelmed her once more and her brain had thrown the towel, leaving her mangled and bruised body to revel freely in the wild joy of the exquisite beatdown she was receiving. Sensing her submission, Shiva grabbed a handful of Cassandra’s hair and pulled her up to expose her battered torso, and with a cold grin she let the rain fall down on her daughter’s bruises, seeing her shiver and moan at the sweet sensation. Eventually, Shiva decided there was no reason to let Nature have all the fun, and pushing Cassandra slightly away from her she began raining fists upon her daughter’s chest, crushing her small breasts and making her whole body twitch in delight. Her nipples stiffened quickly under the barrage, until they were as hard as the fists that were hammering them, and their heightened sensitivity drove Cassandra right into the throes of another orgasm.

            Letting go of any notions of resistance, Cassandra’s body went completely limp, ready to receive the final blow that would push her over the edge. To her surprise, Shiva didn’t continue attacking her breasts, but instead targeted her solar plexus with a cruel uppercut that made her gag and cough as it lifted her clean off the ground. The result, however, was the same, as Cassandra came loudly and violently, her body going into uncontrollable spasms of pleasure as it bent itself around Shiva’s invincible right arm. When she was done, the spent Cassandra slid on her mother’s body, her face rubbing across her chest and belly all the way down, down to her knees once more.

            Holding what remained of her daughter upright by her head, Lady Shiva surveyed the damage. Cassandra was struggling to breathe and her arms were hanging lamely down her wrecked frame, her hands dead between her bruised thighs. A pitiful sight in any situation, but there was something in Cassandra’s lewd, dazed expression and soundly broken body that aroused Lady Shiva. Maybe she enjoyed getting her revenge from that surprise attack two weeks ago. Maybe seeing a fighter as skilled as Cassandra laid low like this still retained its thrill, even if the fight hadn’t been entirely fair. Or maybe it was Cassandra herself, with her desperate pursuit of further carnal pleasure, that excited Shiva. She had never experienced anything like that herself. Her desires ran elsewhere. And yet, she couldn’t help feeling like a part of her was sharing on her daughter’s own tortured joy. Seeing her like this, utterly defeated but so free, driven by nothing but her own selfish desire for pleasure… it was a pitiful sight, yes, but also an oddly beautiful one.

            “Enjoying yourself?” she asked, in a voice that tasted sweeter than honey to her beaten daughter. She tried to pull her head up to look into those big round blue eyes of hers, but something resisted her. Cassandra’s head was now level with Shiva’s hips, mere inches away from the delicate silk of her dress, and it seemed she wouldn’t be easily unglued from them. Shiva could’ve pulled harder, of course. Maybe even reached down and grabbed her by her neck. But she’d sensed Cassandra’s curiosity before. She’d noticed the way her daughter looked at her body when she was no longer trying to put up a fight. When she was at her most submissive, Cassandra simply ceased to recognize Shiva’s body as a weapon, or a source of envy. It became an object of pure desire. And Shiva knew this, all too well.

            Smiling again, Shiva used her empty hand to slide her dress aside just enough to give Cassandra a small but good glimpse under the silk. Her daughter’s face suddenly lit up, her eyes opening even wider, her breath becoming heavy enough that Shiva could feel it brushing against her bare, shaved skin.

            “You were not the only one who decided to expose herself tonight, daughter.”

            She couldn’t tell if Cassandra had heard her words, or if they had even registered in her shaken brain. But she felt her daughter’s head tugging forward, enticed by the lewd sight before her. And in what was possibly the cruelest thing she’d done to her short of killing her, Shiva let the dress fall back into position and relished the sudden, visible sadness in her daughter’s face for one second before kneeing her in the jaw.

            Still on her knees, Cassandra started to fall backwards, the image now scorched into her mind by her burning desire. But halfway through her collapse, a black and red shadow flew above her body, and before her head could touch the ground, Cassandra felt something coiling itself tightly around her neck, breaking her fall and very nearly her windpipe in the process.

            “AGK--“, she tried to yell, but the scream was trapped inside her crushed throat. Shiva had leaped over her crumbling body, turned herself around in the air, and landed in the perfect position to apply a hold she had once heard someone give the colorful name “Dragon Sleeper”. What, if anything, it had to do with dragons, Cassandra had yet to discover, since the move was missing from any manuals of Dragon Style Kung Fu she’d been able to peruse. Still, her relative ignorance of submission hold naming conventions was the last thing in Cassandra’s mind at that moment. In fact, there weren’t many things left in her mind at that moment. And with her mother’s serpent-like arm very nearly closing her air supply, there were fewer by the second.

            “Not yet,” Shiva whispered, leaning close to Cassandra’s reddening face, “not tonight.”

            Utterly spent by the previous orgasms and dangerously close to a third one, Cassandra realized just how much she was at her mother’s mercy. Her entire naked torso lay in front of her, stretched and unprotected. Her arms and legs no longer answered to her. Her mother was completely free to pound and pummel away at her busted-up body until she was left a twitching, knocked out mess under her arm. Or maybe she would just tighten her biceps and send her drifting away to sleep, to a land of wet dreams and unreachable fantasies. Maybe she’d do both. Cassandra felt close enough to either option. Maybe even closer that she’d be comfortable with in any other circumstance. But as it was, all she wanted was for her to hurry up and finish her already, one way or the other.

            What Cassandra had failed to realize was that there was a third option. One that only began to draw itself in her mind when her mother ran two fingers of her free hand down her trembling flesh, tracing a snaking path past her stiff nipples, her tenderized abs, her soft underbelly and then…

            She’d thought about it a lot since that first night. Every time she went to bed, and sometimes even as an idle thought, Cassandra eventually found herself thinking about the nature of the Heavenly Fist. If it truly reversed the flow of qi in her body, transforming anything that would normally register as pain into pleasure… what would it do to actual pleasure? If her mother’s fingers continued on their way and reached their destination, how would it feel? Would it hurt? The thought would’ve made her wince if she’d been capable of doing so. But as it was, she couldn’t even brace herself properly for what was to come. Her head was upside down, her lungs had almost no air left, her senses were leaving her and her limbs were not answering her calls. All Cassandra could feel were those two fingers sliding past her navel, down, down, further down…

            And when they finally prodded her clitoris, Cassandra thought she was dying. Only not in pain. She knew what dying in pain felt like. This was something else. This was a climax on a scale that toppled every single orgasm she had ever felt -- even the ones from two weeks ago. Her body stiffened as in death. Her soul felt like it was being picked clean out of her skin, like a flower from a bush. Her eyes rolled back and her view faded to white and she tried to scream, to moan, to whimper, to say or do anything but she couldn’t. Her consciousness had utterly abandoned her. Her being had ceased to be. All she knew and all she was in that blissful moment was pleasure, raw and pristine and empty of all else.

            Then Shiva plunged her fingers deep inside Cassandra and her spirit came back to her body just in time to feel it all over again.

* * *

 

            Overall, Cassandra had lasted significantly less than last time. A mere twelve minutes was all she could handle. But this didn’t trouble Lady Shiva. After all, she hadn’t pulled her punches this time, and the closeness of the pressure point to her daughter’s heart seemed to have increased its effects just as much as its duration. But those observations were far from her mind as she carefully brushed her now naked hand over her daughter’s battered, sweaty face.

            She hadn’t stirred yet, despite Shiva’s treatment of her wounds, but she was breathing calmly and seemed at peace, so she reckoned it was only a matter of time before she woke up. And although she looked fairly comfortable with her head resting on her chest and her cheeks pressed softly against her breasts, Shiva remembered there were about four different beds inside the house. So after slowly laying her down on the mat, Shiva got up and walked towards Cassandra’s discarded cape. She picked it up and rubbed the thick leather with her fingertips, enjoying its feel. It was rough, but well-made and sturdy enough to resist anything. It reminded her of someone.

            With a swift step aside, Shiva let Cassandra’s blow fly completely past her, hitting only her own cape as her mother used it like a bullfighter’s muleta. Taken aback by the failure of her sneak attack, Cassandra turned around just in time to see Shiva pounce towards her, both hands now poised as tiger claws. They seized Cassandra’s wrist and pushed her chin up, making her bounce up in her spot and destroying what little balance she’d managed to attain.

            “I said, not tonight.”

            Then she pulled her daughter close to her, close enough for their breaths to become as one, and with a sudden twist of her hips, Shiva tossed her over her shoulder in the most perfectly executed Ippon Seoinage that Cassandra had ever taken.

            The centrifugal force alone knocked Cassandra out cold before she even hit the mat.

* * *

            Lady Shiva exited the bedroom and took a deep breath. It’d been an amusing night, regardless of whether her daughter had heeded her lessons or not. There would be time for that later. For now, she wanted her to sleep, and to sleep deeply, resting her body and mind to face a new tomorrow.

            The moon disappeared behind the now empty storm clouds as she walked back into the garden. The sky remained unsettled, however, and the air felt charged with aggressive energies that were not her own, or her daughter’s.

            “Come out now,” she called, “before you embarrass yourself further with your pathetic attempts at stealth.”

            There was a moment of silence, and then the moment was cut by a whistling wind punctuated by a dull thud. Shiva turned around just as the mass of black and red that had landed on a bush of lilies uncoiled itself, revealing a dash of bleached white skin punctuated by a pair of scowling crimson lips.

            “Where is she?” Batwoman said, her arms tight and tense to her sides.

            “Inside. But she is sleeping now.”

            “She’s coming with me.”

            “If she so chooses, she is free to join you in the morning. You may even stay and wait, if you wish. But right now, my daughter is not to be disturbed.”

            “I wasn’t asking,” Batwoman growled, raising her fists.

            “Excellent,” Shiva replied, cracking her fingers, “Come, then. I shall teach you some manners.”

            Inside the bedroom, the sound of a sharp thump somewhere in the distance made Cassandra stir and moan in her sleep.


End file.
